he gets over the worst of the shock. Say,
at first sight he wa'n't a man you'd think any woman would lose her
breath tryin' to catch, less'n she was his landlady, and that was what I
figures out that this female peace disturber was.

Monty might have been a winner once, but it was a long spell back. Just
then he was some out of repair. He had a head big enough for a college
professor, and a crop of hair like an herb doctor, but his eyes were
puffy underneath, and you could see by the _cafe au lait_ tint to his
face that his liver'd been on a long strike. He was fairly thick through
the middle, but his legs didn't match the rest of him. They were too
thin and too short.

"If I'd known you was comin', I'd had the scrub lady dust under there,"
says I; "but it won't need it now for a couple of weeks."

He makes a stab at sayin' something, but his breath hadn't come back
yet. He revives enough though, to take a look at his clothes. Then he
works his silk dicer up off'm his ears, and has a peek at that. It was a
punky lid, all right, but it had saved a lot of wear on his koko when he
made that slide for home plate and struck the wall.

"Was this a long-distance run, or just a hundred-yard sprint?" says I.
"Never mind, if it comes hard. I don't blame you a bit for side-steppin'
a heart to heart talk with any such a rough-and-ready converser as your
friend. I'd do the same myself."

He looks up kind of grateful at that, and sticks out a soft, lady-like
paw for me to shake. Say, that wasn't such a slow play, either! He was
too groggy to say a word, but he comes pretty near winnin' me right
there. I sets Swifty to work on him with the whisk-broom, hands out a
glass of ice-water, and in a minute or so his voice comes back.

Oh, yes, he had one. It was a little shaky, but, barrin' that, it was as
smooth as mayonnaise. And language! Why, just tellin' me how much
obliged he was, he near stood the dictionary on its head. There wa'n't
no doubt of his warm feelin' for me by the time he was through. It was
almost like bein' adopted by a rich uncle.

"Oh, that's all right," says I. "You can use that couch any time the
disappearin' fit comes on. She was hot on the trail; eh, Monty?"

"It was all a painful, absurd error," says he, "a mistaken identity, I
presume. Permit me to make myself known to you," and he shoves out his
card.

Rasmulli Pinphoodle, J. R. D.--that was the way it read.

"Long ways from Smith, ain't it?" says I.